“The US Failed to Learn Lessons from the Iraq War Two Decades Later”

After invading the country in 2003, Washington maintained its “peace through force” doctrine to retain its hegemony. An “error” to be corrected, says American historian Stephen Wertheim.

Historian and researcher at the Carnegie Foundation, Stephen Wertheim is the author of the essay Tomorrow, the World : The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy (2020, untranslated), in which he criticizes the United States’ quest for global hegemony and defends the emergence of a more modest and collaborative approach to American foreign policy. Twenty years just after the American invasion of Iraq, he deciphers for Release lessons not learned by Washington.

With two decades of hindsight, why did the United States invade Iraq?

This question will remain partly unsolvable because, to some extent, the Bush administration itself did not really know. And it would also have to be explained why so much of the country at least acquiesced in the drive for war. At high levels, various officials had different motivations, and the George W. Bush administration never convened a meeting of key foreign policy players, including the president, to weigh the pros and cons of the invasion. of Iraq. Discussions were still focused on the next stage of the confrontation with Saddam Hussein, until